1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to heat dissipating elements and decoupling capacitors and more particularly to a structure that utilizes the decoupling capacitors as heat dissipating elements.
2. Description of the Related Art
Both decoupling capacitors and heat sinks are discrete devices conventionally added to a semiconductor chip at the packaging level. The decoupling capacitor is used to stabilize the supplied voltage levels, so that any noise spike can be damped or filtered away. The heat sink, on the other hand, is used to remove the heat generated by the chip and provides a large surface area. Over the years of technology advancements and process scaling, on-chip decoupling capacitors have been developed that use high-density capacitors such as deep-trench capacitors, stacked capacitors. Placing decoupling capacitors closer to the devices improves power stability. The decoupling capacitors which are placed closer to the devices suffer less voltage rippling effect due to increased filtering.